Joni Ernst

Yesterday the New York Times ran an article–a slide show, really–called Rising Stars in the Republican Party. It highlighted some of the young Republicans who won on Tuesday, including, among others, Elise Stefanik, Tom Cotton…and Joni Ernst. The article was corrected today, as follows: Correction: November 6, 2014 An earlier version of this article quoted incorrectly from comments by Senator-elect Joni Ernst, who on Tuesday night became the first woman »

Let’s start this thread with more good news. Power Line Pick Elise Stefanik has won her race in New York’s 21st Congressional District. She is, in fact, routing her opponent Aaron Woolf. We’re proud to have supported Stefanik. I want to thank my older daughter Laura for first calling her to my attention. Now let’s move to other good news. Joni Ernst is leading Bruce Braley in Iowa by 4 »

Last night, Joni Ernst was making an appearance at the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity house at Iowa State, when she was interrupted by a group of Occupy-type protesters who had infiltrated the event. They started a stupid chant about the Koch Brothers–highly relevant to most Iowa voters, I’m sure–which they kept up for quite a while. Amazingly, the fraternity brothers were able to restrain themselves from slugging the twerps; instead, »

If you believe Nate Silver, and his track record (2010 and 2012) provides plenty of reason to do so, there is only one “toss-up” Senate race at this point. That’s the Kansas race between incumbent Republican Pat Roberts and alleged independent Greg Orman. In all other Senate races, Silver finds that one candidate has a 66 percent or better chance of winning. And in two races once thought to be »

With control of the Senate at stake, Barack Obama can’t quite stand the thought of remaining on the sidelines. This, perhaps, is why he keeps injecting himself into the race by telling people that his policies are on the ballot and that endangered Democratic incumbents are “folks who vote with me.” Obama’s desire to participate may also explain why Michelle Obama went to Iowa not long ago to campaign for »

Two more polls released in the last few days have Joni Ernst (a Power Line pick) leading Bruce Braley in the Iowa Senate race. A USA Today/Suffolk poll shows Ernst ahead by 47-43. A Quinnipiac poll, with a larger sample, has it Ernst 47-Braley 45. This means that the four most recent publicly released polls all have Ernst ahead. The combined number of individuals polled in these surveys is nearly »

If you have donated to political campaigns in the past, you, like me, are probably getting 100 to 200 emails a day, asking for money. One difference may be that I get them from both parties. I once contributed $3 to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in the name of “Illegal Contributor,” residence, Stillwater Prison, just to show how easy the Obama campaign made it to donate illegally. Now I get »

For a while now, polls have shown three hugely important Senate races — Alaska, Arkansas, and Louisiana — moving in favor of the Republican candidate. Thus, Politico now asks whether these three races “are slipping from Dems.” In Alaska, the conservative base has rallied behind Republican Dan Sullivan after a contentious August primary, and Democratic Sen. Mark Begich was stung by backlash over an attack ad he later decided to »

Joni Ernst and Bruce Braley held their first debate last night. Immigration was front-and-center, which is probably not a bad thing for Ernst. Braley tried, however, to spin the issue into an advertisement for his “bipartisanship.” He invited Ernst to “join John McCain and Marco Rubio in calling on Speaker Boehner to bring this immigration bill to the floor of the House so we can pass it.” Ernst declined the »

Raising money from Texas trial lawyers for his current campaign, Rep. Bruce Braley (D, IA) disparaged Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley as a benighted farmer who had not received the enlightenment afforded by a law school education. Braley conjured the nightmare scenario that would attend a GOP Senate majority: that boob Grassley would chair the Senate Judiciary Committee. Horrors! The disparagement took place behind closed doors. It wasn’t intended for public »

We have Tom Steyer’s number. He is a liberal billionaire who, having made a fortune investing in old-fashioned energy companies, now styles himself a scourge of global warming. Nevertheless, judging by the temperature under my own collar, he is still contributing to it in his own way. Steyer is a monstrous hypocrite. See John Hinderaker’s post “The epic hypocrisy of Tom Steyer,” as well as the follow-up “New York Times »

Here’s Bruce Braley, the Democratic candidate for the open Senate seat in Iowa, on the difficulties left-wingers encounter when running in the heartland: I think part of the problems that progressives have faced is that, at times, there has been an impression that there is an elitism among progressive policies that wants to ignore the realities of what’s going on in places between the east coast and the west coast. »

You have probably noticed that this year’s Power Line Picks are up on our main page. They consist of two Senate candidates — Rep. Tom Cotton (Ark) and Joni Ernst (Iowa) — and four House candidates — Mia Love (Utah-4), Stewart Mills (Minn-8), Alex Mooney (WVA-2), and Elise Stefanik (NY-21). Cotton and Love were on our 2012 slate, which many of you generously supported. Tom won a resounding victory, and »